Brussels, 21/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - The launching of the European Year of Languages, on 19 February in Lund (Sweden), provided an opportunity for various EU celebrities to express their views on the importance in today's society of knowing a second, if not a third, foreign language. It was also an opportunity for the European Commission to publish a special edition of Eurobarometer which takes stock of the linguistic knowledge of Europeans, their opinions on how useful it is to speak other languages and their desire to do so, as well as the means used in the various Member States for language teaching.
The Eurobarometer survey reveals, without great surprise it must be said, that English is by far the most widely spoken foreign language of Europeans, after their mother tongue: 41% of those taking part in the survey say they speak English, which was more than French (19%), German (10%) or Spanish (7%). The proportion of Europeans who can only speak their mother tongue is 47%, which is an average that hides major differences between Luxembourg (2% of Luxembourgers can only speak their mother tongue) and the United Kingdom (66% of British people can only speak their mother tongue). In Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark, less than 15% of citizens cannot express themselves in another language, whereas this is the case for over half of the Portuguese, Spanish and French.
Furthermore, 74% of Europeans do not speak a second foreign language and 92% do not speak a third foreign language. And yet, a considerable number of those taking part in the survey (71%) consider that everyone should know a foreign language, with the least convinced being the Germans and the Austrians, and the most convinced the Luxembourgers and the Greeks.
Europeans mainly learn foreign languages at secondary school (59%), with language learning in the professional world being low (17%), mainly in countries like Portugal and France. The Member States where the first foreign language is often learnt at primary school are Ireland, Luxembourg and Austria. The reasons that deter European citizens from learning a foreign language are, first of all, a lack of time (34%) followed by a lack of motivation (31%), discouragingly completed by the cost of language learning. For 47% of Europeans, EU enlargement must not lead to a single common language of communication, but 38% consider this is inevitable.
Commenting on the results of this survey from Lund, where the European Year of Languages has just opened (see EUROPE of 19/20 February, p.15), Viviane Reding, European Commission responsible for education and culture, felt they were "encouraging, even though much still remained to be done before all European school-leavers could speak two languages other than their mother tongue", which, she added, requires "greater efforts in the area of lifelong language learning in the Member States". Also taking part in Lund, Thomas Östros, President of the EU Education Council, felt the achievement of the Lisbon aim to make the EU the most dynamic socially homogenous economy of the world by 2010 requires greater mobility of students, teachers, researchers and other professional categories, a mobility that can only become a reality through improved linguistic training. Finally, Walter Schwimmer, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, felt that language skills are a necessary factor of democratic citizenship in Europe.